Is there anything more wholesome than a Christmas Card? Not in this day and age. However, back in 1843 the first commercial Christmas Card was met with controversy. The card, illustrated by John Callcott Horsley, depicted a family raising their glasses to celebrate Christmas. And what was in those glasses? Well lets just say it wasn’t Miwadi. Pearls were clutched and temple veins burst. The Puritan Christians denounced the card immediately.
A few fundamentalists aside, the new greeting card was greeted into popular culture and soon Horsley’s concept influenced many to do the same. Jobbins of Warwick Court in London printed the first cards in lithography and hand-coloured by an artist named Mason. They were lithographed on stiff cardboard, with the greeting, “A Merry Christmas and a Happy New Year to You.” It also states that is was “Published at Summerly’s Home Treasury Office, 12 Old Bond Street, London.
Across the Atlantic German lithographer, Louis Prang, produced the first Christmas Card in the United States. The German immigrant set up shop in Boston, Massachusetts in 1860. Soon he began creating the first color cards with scenes of winter tales for the festive season.
Abraham Lincoln recruited Thomas Nast, a political cartoonist, to draw Santa Claus with the Union troops to boost moral during the American Civil War. Nast was the first to introduce a Father Christmas in the now-traditional red suit and big leather belt. “Hold my Coke.”
From raising a glass of wine to contemporary crudeness, the Puritans are stranded. Today, Christmas Cards are big business, and business is a greetin’.
